Author's Note – it's not much right now, but will be much added upon and expanded later. This story is not going to be entirely about Javert, I hope to make Valjean and Fantine major characters as well. My first Les Miserables fic, so constructive criticism greatly appreciated.
Prologue.
Javert arrived in Montreuil-sur-Mer on October the 23rd. This was significant for several reasons, the first being that Montreuil-sur-Mer was about to gain a Chief Inspector who might actually do something, the second being that it was said Chief Inspector Javert's birthday. Of course, he was not aware of that, never having actually been told when his birthday was. According to his records, his birthday was February 4th, the day that he escaped from the orphanage. (To be fair, one may say that this was the day his life began, seeing as how there was nothing even resembling life before it.) He had estimated himself to be about fifteen then, which would put his year of birth at 1780. This number was incorrect, though, which explains why Javert looked approximately 21 and a half months younger than he said he was.
But none of that is important, really, unless the reader is making a timeline of Javert's life, to which I dearly hope they are not, because even though he life may have been somewhat interesting to literature analysts and Philip Quast fans … well… it wasn't that interesting.
In fact, the most interesting thing about his life was the lack of interesting things. In Paris, he spent every waking moment either patrolling around the city or sitting in his office, writing and signing paper after goddamned paper, on a high either from sleep deprivation or intense amounts of caffeine to make up for said sleep deprivation. When he did sleep, it was involuntary, and made no-one happy because it often resulted in a large puddle of drool on whatever he had been working on.
He was hardly ever at his flat, which either pleased or greatly upset whomever he was currently living with (it depended on if they'd… well… let's not get into that.)
Javert had been transferred to M.-sur-M. because… alright, he wasn't entirely sure why he had been transferred. It certainly couldn't be considered a promotion, he mused, as he gazed around at the three or four buildings that made up the majority of the town. Perhaps Chabouillet had done it out of spite – or to get him away from Vidocq – but it didn't matter. When it came to the going-ons inside M. Chabouillet's head, he had found out long ago it was better to just be left in the dark.
Therefore, he arrived in Montreuil-sur-Mer not knowing why he was there and not knowing it was his birthday. He only knew what he was supposed to be doing, and even those instructions had been vague.
"Just do… something," Chabouillet had told him with a flick of his hand as he sent the man on his way. "Oh, and good luck."